Less than two years after his central role in a Skype sex scandal, Daniel McDonald allegedly helped found an all-male sex initiation ring at Australia's defence academy.
McDonald was allegedly among a group of cadets from the Australian Defence Force Academy's (ADFA) football team who formed a group known as LOML (love of my life).
"(They) performed sex acts on each other by way of initiation into a football team," Australian Federal Police Detective Sergeant Anthony Crocker told the ACT Supreme Court on Monday.
The group existed for about nine months before it was exposed at a Canberra nightclub in June, in what Vice Chief of the Defence Force Air Marshal Mark Binskin described as "drunken stupidity".
Seven cadets were suspended over the incident.
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McDonald's lawyer, James Glissan QC, said his client was involved by association only as captain of the football team.
"He was suspended merely because he was a member of the group but not because he was present at the incident that led to the suspension," he said.
McDonald, who used a hidden camera to film himself having sex with a female cadet in his ADFA dormitory in 2011, faced sentencing submissions on Monday after being found guilty in August of indecency and offensive broadcasting.
The 21-year-old, who remains suspended on full pay from ADFA, is likely to be sacked from the defence force as acting Justice John Nield confirmed on Monday that McDonald would be convicted on the
Skype matter when he is sentenced on October 23.
McDonald heard a stinging victim impact statement read by the woman who was the subject of the footage he streamed to seven cadets in a nearby room.
"You stole my dignity," said the now 20-year old, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
"My name scarred, my life destroyed.
"You could not have hurt me more had you taken a bat and beaten me with it."
She said McDonald and his friends used her as an object.
"You reduced me to nothing more than an animal," she said.
She was "shattered" when she learned what happened and rejects McDonald's claims that she consented to have sex on camera.
"I became nothing more than `that Skype slut' ... the abuse and violation I was subjected to was unbearable," she said.
Prosecutor Kylie Weston-Scheuber said McDonald and co-accused Dylan Deblaquiere, who was also found guilty of arranging the Skype transmission, have failed to show remorse or explain their actions.
She said people would find it "strange" that men would want to watch their mates having sex, or to have sex watched by people they knew.
Mr Glissan said the two young men had been stupid and
irresponsible.
"You are dealing with two young men at the end of their adolescence acting like extremely foolish young children," he said.
Justice Nield acknowledged their youth but added "they can drive at 17, marry at 18 and fight for their country at 18".
Prosecutors profiled McDonald as a man who habitually broke the rules at the Canberra academy and are seeking jail terms for both him and Deblaquiere.
